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What if the ‘Perpetually Horny Middle-Aged Man’ in the News Was a Person of Color?

Emil Photo Again Edited 61b7dabb61239

We live in a sex-crazed culture.

Pity the poor African American female reporter who inadvertently drew a map that turned out to be more graphic than she had intended.

https://youtu.be/VWoFvCpKZxI

What would Freud say? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?

So let’s see if Siobhan Riley gets the same break that Anthony Weiner seems to be getting.

In a culture of hookups and booty calls, we seem to be getting exactly what we asked for.

A candidate for high public office (mayor of NYC, is pretty high, no?) in the person of Weiner, who with every subsequent interview these days sounds like a sick, deceitful person. (Maybe he should text answers to the media from here on?)

Of course, none of that instantly disqualifies him to represent New Yorkers, or makes him want to roll up in a ball and hide.

No, he feels the need to campaign even harder!

And then there’s his so-called victim, Sydney Leathers, who seems not so much terrorized but happy to give up her right to privacy and bask in her mass-media tell all as the texted, jilted virtual “lover.”

It does raise the question, did anything happen if there was no physical touching? Does a digital dalliance count as “real”? Or is this a Jimmy Carter “sin of the heart”? Remember how the 39th president gave an interview to Playboy and said, “I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.”

Jimmy Carter was so old-school. Maybe we need more of that?

Instead, we have Weiner and Leathers who seem happy to screw up our moral compass.

Here we have Weiner asking for forgiveness, but probably knowing, like a deranged killer, that he will kill again.

And there’s Leathers talking about Weiner proclaiming himself as a “perpetually horny middle-aged man.”

From a diversity stand point, here’s an observation. White people behaving badly do not a stereotype make for some reason, though Weiner, San Diego’s Bob Filner, Gov. Mark Sanford, John Edwards, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton … there’s a long list just from memory.

Do we have not enough to create the archetypical “sex-crazed white politico” stereotype?

Now what if Weiner were Black or a person of color?

There would be no going back out to face the public for a second chance. How quick would people say, “You got your shot. You blew it. Goodbye.”

Such a person would be shrouded in shame.

But Weiner seems to shine a light on his sexting, and if he hangs in there, and maybe even wins, he proves the research that says one can survive a sex scandal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/07/mark-sanford-is-no-exception-most-politicians-survive-scandals/

But I’d say it also helps if you’re white.

 

Emil Guillermo writes about race and other issues for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog (www.aaldef.org/blog)

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